A potato at room temperature of 20°C is placed in an oven whose temperature is 200°C.?
An hour later the temperature of a potato is 140°C. Under the (unreasonable) assumption that the potato's temperature is always uniform, how long did it take the potato to reach 50°C.
I need help with this homework problem. Thanks!
Update:It involves using Newton's Law of Cooling, so fifteen minutes is not the correct answer.
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You also have to make the assumption (unreasonable also) that the temperature increase is linear with time. Actually it is exponential, asymptotically approaching 200º.
So the potato warms up by 120º in 60 min, or 2º per min.
for an increase of (50–20) = 30º, we get
30º / 2º/min = 15 min